The present invention is directed to the field of monitoring an controlling the operational performance of computer output peripheral devices, e.g. printers.
In many offices and other commercial establishments, it is common to have more than one device connected to a network that is capable of printing. Furthermore, multiple users often have the capability to print to any of a group of multiple printing devices on a network. In a large enterprise organization, a plurality of printers often reside on the network, many of which have different manufacturers and makes. Even those printers having the same manufacturer are often created as part of different generations of product lines.
Networked printers are generally bi-directional in nature, meaning that they not only receive print jobs for printing, but they also respond with a communication that can be used to monitor printer status. Each printer product line generally includes a document monitoring utility for monitoring printer status and translating notifications and communications received from corresponding printers. The notifications received from printers are assigned a code, or an object identifier (“OID”) corresponding to the status of the printer. Such status notifications include messages describing events such as “Printing,” “Paper Jam,” “Out of Toner,” and any other type of status or notification, depending on the particular features available on a printer.
Document and printer monitoring utilities function to monitor and receive OIDs and display for a user the message corresponding to a particular OID. Unfortunately, different manufactures and products, even different lines of printers from the same manufacturer, use different OIDs to describe the same event. Furthermore, in some instances, different lines of printers use the same OID to describe completely different events. Therefore, document and printer monitoring software is product line specific in that it functions properly only when used solely with the line of printers for which it particularly corresponds. Thus, a single document monitoring utility cannot be used to correctly monitor different printer product lines.
Consequently, network administrators must use a plurality of printer monitoring utilities to track printer activity throughout a network. It would be preferable if one printer monitoring utility had the capability to simultaneously monitor the status of printers from different product lines.